Mazanti. Weird Ones. Aren’t we all?
beingzoe about 1 year ago | 1 response     Creative Endeavors Gibber-gabber

Just stumbled this fascinating video entitled, Weird Ones, and this is exactly what I love and hate about the internet.

The video as you will find out in a moment, or are currently discovering, is a montage of 50’s-ish footage set to a fairly mellow but pointed indie-style rock tune about how, ”...they are the weird ones, not me.”

Good song, nice montage. I am a sucker for atomic age media and was immediately sucked in to the hypnotic David Byrn-ish anti-anthem and imagery. Love it, and that’s why I hate it so much.

I long ago gave up television. Cable and broadcast media have been conspicuously absent from life for quite some time. Not entirely out of loathing for the medium, but more due it’s ability to suck you in, poach your brain, and never let go like your lover heroin. When a television is on I shut off, people speaking directly to me, and I completely unaware of all.

At some point between the advent of broadband and the divine appearance of the stumble button, in doses too incremental to notice, the internet has become my television. How many hours have I used/spent/squandered watching random snippets of video, reading news, articles, white papers, research, books, gliding through tag clouds, image after image, lectures, movies, cartoons, porn, and who knows what else.

For some reason all of these thoughts exploded while watching this video. I nearly turned it off (er, hit the stumble button again). But I didn’t. Something brought me back, but not to the trance. More like waking up. Who made this song? Who did the montage?

I automatically assumed that it was some piece of new music that had been overlaid to black and white surrealism of historical poignancy as piece of digital folk art. But I had to know, who wrote the song?

A quick google for “weird ones” brought up thousands more eclectic results that I could muster scanning, so I opted to head to YouTube and see if the poster had left any background in the comments. Sure enough:

Stranger in a strange land. Public domain video over song from 1979 indie underground album,”Philosopher.”

I was grateful. While I am a supporter of non-linear globbed information, I am also extremely frustrated when I encounter a two minute clip of astounding thought, knowledge, or entertainment, but completely out of context with little hope of finding the source for the information. Which is exactly why I bookmark videos I would like to share here at CoTradeCo, at least until I have the time to include some meaningful information or links, believing that if I’m going to repost something that can be found 50 other places online, I at least owe you some context or background to what I’m sharing.

Fortunately the poster, mazantimusic felt the same way, or at least cared enough to say something. While cryptic, it gave something to go on. Often the poster of videos at places like YouTube are not the creators of the works, but I took a chance and headed to their profile page to see if they had created anything else, or at least found/mashed up some other interesting stuff only to discover that mazantimusic hasn’t posted anything else at all. In fact under their stats there were nothing but zero’s. Zero videos watched. Zero comments. And they had signed up yesterday!

Cynical zoe kicks into action. This is obviously some lame ass viral marketing stunt in phase 1 by a firm that hasn’t learned enough to at least pretend to be a real person.

Then I notice the blurb for the channel:

Underground artist. Continuously working on life as conceptual art.

While still suspicious, I started having more pleasant thoughts of someone working their way towards Guy Maddin genius, toiling away in front of iVideo or Windows movie maker making mashups.

Then in the next moment I see below the blurb a link to a website (what a novel idea). Landing at http://www.mazantimusic.com/ I quickly realize that this was no viral marketing stunt, this was not some strange SPAM trip to get a few cents or dollars out of me (or via me). This was a bonafide artist website. The very same artist whose band had recorded the song I was seeking in the first place.

It turns out that Weird Ones is the third track on the album entitled, Philospher by a band called Mazanti, recorded in 1979. Go figure.

Apparently Lewis Mazanti has been making music and art for a while now, and is still at it. After thousands of stumbles that have more and more begun to feel like little more than corporate lo-fi versions of what used to be on television and other commercially driven material (I exaggerate) it’s just a guy. Just a guy, making stuff. A guy with no wiki page espousing his seminal influence over life as we know it but I hadn’t heard of before. Just a guy making stuff and sharing it freely on his website. It’s like 1997 again.

Literally, just like 1997. His website will barely stream the music, and my quicktime crashes the entire browser when it begins playing—ah how I long for the days of RealPlayer, and when did I make Quicktime my default player anyway? :)

Anyway, Mazanti Music and Lewis Mazanti have revived my faith in life and will be my short duration personal saviors for the next 23 minutes (last known short duration personal savior, The Burning of Rome )

Watch the video above, send me $5, and visit http://www.mazantimusic.com/ to go back when things were better…back to 1997.

Your the weird one. Not me. Now just stumble on out of here…

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